The requirements for advanced lithography solutions are constantly increasing. Up to now the optical lithography with its extension into the immersion lithography and strong resolution enhancement techniques (RET) represents the lithography solution of choice. With decreasing critical dimensions (CD) new approaches are needed to provide cost effective methods for small and medium volume production on one side and for efficient photomask fabrication including the RET on the other side. A viable solution for both application fields is the Multi Shaped Beam (MSB) technology, which is currently being developed at Vistec Electron Beam in Jena. E-beam technology has already been used for R&D as well as prototyping applications well ahead of the respective production technology node. It is as well the technology of choice for the future mask fabrication. However, the decreasing CD and thus increasing pattern density asks for new ideas to overcome the throughput challenges faced today. This bottleneck is addressed by parallel writing methods where MSB is one of these techniques. In correlation with the MSB writing technology an appropriate data preparation path is mandatory. One major criterion for the performance of MSB data processing is the shot count reduction which can be reached for different types of patterns. In this paper results from an analysis of the current status of MSB shot segmentation are reported. Beside collecting statistical data of the individual structure size distribution an analysis of the shot count on different pattern coming from mask write as well as direct write applications was carried out. This was performed for different technology nodes and the results are compared.

Date Published: 15 May 2010
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7545, 26th European Mask and Lithography Conference, 754506 (15 May 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.864245

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7545:
26th European Mask and Lithography Conference
Uwe F.W. Behringer; Wilhelm Maurer, Editor(s)